Some background. A little while ago Adobe announced : Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5 will include a Packager for iPhone that will let you publish ActionScript 3 projects to run as native applications for iPhone. These applications can be delivered to iPhone users through the Apple App Store.
After thursday’s announcement of the 4th revision of the iPhone OS some people at Adobe must have been a bit confused while sipping their coffees. Apple tightens its requirements for developers interested in publishing application on Apple’s App Store once more:
Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
Maybe without the alphabet soup: the change puts new restrictions on iPhone developers, who won’t be allowed to use third-party software and tools to create iPhone applications.
After the app store waiting for approval stories, the necessary spending of $99 on a developer account to be able to distribute an app to my own phone or to download a beta version of the iPad simulator, I am now kind of lost. And I downloaded Eclipse and the Android 2.1 SDK.
That Mountain View announced the Flash integration with Chrome’s developer build and that it plans to offer similar integration with its shipping browser as quickly as possible, makes Apple’s move more understandable. But why can’t they leave developers free?
So since thursday I fell out of love with the iPhone and I am pretty much sure that Android is going to be the winner in this game. It’s simple: the open-source method just works.
